Surna Blog

Each month, we publish a newsletter discussing a trending topic within the cannabis industry and how it shapes Surna’s philosophy. To be one of the first to receive this information, be sure to sign up for our email list.

Everything in life benefits from routine maintenance - your car, your body, your house. A cannabis cultivation facility is no different. When integrated into the routine, maintenance becomes second nature. But what about the things that only happen every so often? Like an oil change on your car, these are easy to forget to do, but can make a huge impact on the life of your system.

What causes cannabis plants to flower? Any successful cannabis cultivator must know the answer to this question in order to generate revenue from a crop. Alternatively, the reverse knowledge, how to prevent cannabis plants from flowering, must be used to keep a Mother plant in a perpetual veg state.

For commercial cultivation facilities, labor-saving techniques are important. As the number of plants in a garden increases, the amount of effort it takes to care for all of them increases as well. One of the most labor-intensive practices that can easily be eliminated is raising lights as plants grow.

At Surna, we talk a lot about creating efficient cannabis cultivation facilities. Efficiency is key on many levels within a grow, consuming less energy, achieving the highest yield possible, but the most significant reason to strive for an efficient cultivation facility is to maximize profits. As the industry grows and matures, competition will increase and the best way to combat rising competition is to tighten up your procedures and create the most efficient grow possible, allowing you to produce higher yields for less money.

There are two main approaches to grow room layout for indoor gardening - Sea of Green (SOG) and Aisles. Sea of Green growing involves pushing all the plants together into one large plant canopy, removing all the space between them. Whereas, aisle growing involves creating rows of plants with spaces, or aisles, between them, allowing workers to walk between the rows of plants.

Cannabis cultivation centers cost a lot to run each month, especially indoor ones. For this reason, it is important to reduce your costs while still maximizing the yield from your facility. The following tips will allow you to produce more for less.

Many growers advocate the use of an 18/6 light schedule (18 hours on, 6 hours off) while plants are in Veg. However, this may not be the most beneficial light schedule. Switching to a series of 6/2 (6 hours on, 2 hours off) light patterns may increase plant growth while also potentially creating a more stable controlled environment.

When creating a cultivation center, selecting the right equipment from the start is crucial to success. This means talking to engineers who have sized climate control systems for cannabis, building the right size garden for your budget and knowing which equipment is often undervalued within a garden.

The Surna Reflector includes a glass lens, as do most reflectors designed for indoor cultivation. Before you decide to remove that lens let’s look at the reasons why, in this case, the glass is actually a good thing, creating a number of benefits for your grow.